


Happy New Year

by celluloidbroomcloset



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 12:06:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4348184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloidbroomcloset/pseuds/celluloidbroomcloset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-Dressed to Kill, Steed and Cathy enjoy a bit of a respite from adventuring. </p><p>Author's Note: I've always liked Steed and Cathy's relationship. There's an unfairness in its treatment at the hands of some fans, I think, because they can be very contentious. But that Steed loves her and she loves him I think is self-evident to anyone who pays attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy New Year

A Steed/Cathy story, set around Dressed to Kill. Steed and Cathy celebrate New Year's. 

Disclaimer: I just finished this and I decided not to edit it. Mistakes probably abound.

NSFW, so avoid if this couple is not your glass of champagne.

Hope you enjoy - and, as always, I like responses!

“If I’d known this would be the way to tame you, I’d have done it a lot sooner.”

Cathy rolled her eyes. “Endangering my life and then plying me with liquor? I think you’ve tried that before, Steed.”

She felt his chest shake with a burst of silent laughter. The brandy snifter slid under her nose.

“Drink,” he commanded.

“So masterful! So dominant!”

“Didn’t mother ever tell you that no one likes a sarcastic woman?”

“That piece of advice I seem to have missed.”

“Obviously.”

She placed her lips around the rim of the glass and let him tilt some of the sweet, tangy liquor against her tongue.

These were the moments, few and far between as they were, that Cathy liked the best. A quiet evening – or was it morning? – at home, the phone off the hook, and no immediate expectation of some hideous adventure because they had just finished one. She felt she could safely lower her guard, and trust to Steed not to abuse that momentary vulnerability. 

It was good, sitting on his sofa, leaning against his chest, his long legs splayed out on either side of her. It was closeness and friendship and an interesting, non-specific kind of love, the sort that demanded nothing long-term from her, that only asked her to be here now. She thought it suited Steed too – he was hardly a man to be interested in a long-term love affair with any woman, her least of all. But this – whatever it was – made sense. For now. 

His free hand moved up into her hair, softly playing with the strands until she tilted her head back. His lips had the tang of brandy on them.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Relaxed.”

She stretched her hand up and captured his head, pulling him down against her. Steed was deceptive – the hardened man of action, the dissolute man-about-town, the rough conqueror, the tender lover, and all of them real. He flowed from one to the other without apparent effort. It unnerved her because she could not trust which he was at any moment.

So seldom did they sit like this, kiss like this, yet when it happened she wished that it happened more. The clink of his glass when he set it on the floor came to her ears as though filtered through a thick haze. Scent and taste and then touch intermingled – she was in a seraglio, immersed in a steam bath, lost to all but the most basic senses. He did not break the kiss but shifted it, pressing his lips to the corner of her jaw and then the sensitive spot just below her ear. 

“Oh, Cathy,” she heard him say, voice deep and tender and wondering. She turned her head to kiss him again, taking over this time, opening his mouth and letting her tongue coast across his. His body was alive around hers, the movement of his chest, the play of his muscles as he kissed her, the soft, indulgent rumble in his throat.

In a haze, they disentangled, and in a haze they moved, back to his bedroom. It was a strange half-childish, half-masculine place, cluttered with his life – Tintin books and cricket bats, polo equipment, an expansive wardrobe; a pop gun and a teddy bear side by side with Proust, Tolstoy, and the Ministry code book. She saw it and did not see it, because she had seen it all before, and he was already pulling at her sweater.

She stretched her arms over her head then let them drop, let him step into her and around her, her chest pressed against his. She found the edge of his sweater and slid one hand beneath it to touch the soft flesh of his stomach. He mimicked her earlier movement, stepping back and raising his arms, letting her strip him – though she fumbled a bit, because he was too tall – and then drawing her back into an embrace. His hands at her back unhooked her bra and he dotted kisses across her shoulder, dropping the garment between them, lifting her against him until she was off her feet and falling gently back onto the bed.

He kissed down her neck, the line between her breasts, assiduously avoiding touching her where she most wanted, prolonging the expectation and the desire by pressing his mouth back to hers, her hands exploring his chest with its sparse, crisp hair until he groaned into her mouth and she felt him harden more against her thigh. Then he slid down, curling his dark head to kiss her breasts and his hands pushing on the waist of her trousers. 

“You’ll have to stand up,” she managed to say. He made a noise like a disappointed child, but did as she suggested. In any case, it afforded her a moment to regain some of her higher senses and observe the effect of his tossled hair, his eyes shining in the dim light, and the evidence of his arousal that she felt but always, always enjoyed seeing for herself.

Now that his weight was off her, she shimmied easily out of her trousers and panties and moved beneath the sheets and blankets of his untidy bed. In that time, he had stripped and before she ever got a chance to look at him, was kissing her again, this time his intentions clear. His hand pressed between her thighs and she opened them wider, a rumble of pleasure moving up her body from that point of joining. He toyed with her, punctuating every small push of his fingers with a kiss, and pressed her onwards to a quick, shivering orgasm as a prelude of things to come. And she touched him, stroked him, ran her fingers up and down the length of his penis until he gave a strangled gasp and thrust against her hand.

It took most of her fortitude to pull away at that moment.

“Condom, Steed,” she said. To give him credit, he did not make any overtures of disappointment, but rolled over and reached into his bedside drawer for the box. She pulled back the covers and took the little packet from his hand. It was gratifying to see him, and gratifying also to hear the purr of pleasure as she rolled the condom onto his erection in two quick strokes.

He settled down between her legs, holding her open with one hand as the other guided himself in. There was a stoppage of time, a sudden blank silence as Cathy slammed her eyes shut and felt him, nothing but him. She could hover there forever. Then she opened her eyes and looked into his. 

“All right?” he said.

“All right.”

It was a repeat of their foreplay on the sofa, nothing but sense, their two bodies, gradually co-mingled, gradually coming together and becoming part of one another. She had never given herself over quite so completely, to let him guide her and to guide him at the same time. It could have been hours or minutes stretched into hours. She could smell his sweat, taste his skin, feel his breath, hear his soft, keening grunts, each sense taking over from the other, and all of it, gradually, focused on the friction between her legs, the hard length inside of her. He demanded nothing and everything from her, and gave her the same. 

She lost track of herself and the pleasure, when it came, enveloped her and made her forget everything outside of this room, this man, this perfect and apparently endless moment. She could hear her own voice, far away, and even as it died she heard him too, felt the short jerking of his body on top of hers, and knew, with the last vestige of her rational mind, that he was feeling what she felt.

There were minutes afterwards before Cathy felt herself become herself again. She held the dark head that rested against her shoulder.

“Happy New Year, Steed,” she said.

Steed’s lifted his face from the pillow. “It’s past New Year, Mrs. Gale.”

“Still: I hope it’s a good one.”

His chest shook with silent laughter. “I know it is.”


End file.
